In the interior of an aircraft, besides the aircraft's air-conditioning system there are a variety of different technical devices which produce heat and which, in order to guarantee safe function, must be cooled. For this reason, different cooling systems have been provided in aircrafts for a long time which are associated as individual solutions to the respective technical devices which are to be cooled. The provision of this type of individual systems requires relatively large amounts of structural space within the aircraft and there is little flexibility. Moreover, this type of individual systems often makes direct use of ambient air as a heat sink for the elimination of heat from the technical devices to be cooled. However, this leads to undesirable heating up of the interior of the aircraft.
It is established practice, for example in accordance with DE 38 12 739 C1, to position a cooling chamber inside an galley of an aircraft near to the outer skin of the aircraft and to provide a cold air chamber between the cooling chamber and the outer skin of the aircraft. In the cold air chamber, air, as a cold carrier medium, is cooled down by means of heat exchange with the outer skin of the aircraft, and after cooling down it is supplied to the cooling chamber for the cooling down of a service trolley which is filled, for example, with drinks or food which are to be cooled down. The disadvantage, however, of this state of the art technology is that each cooling chamber requires a separate cold air chamber. This means that the distribution of space within the aircraft becomes relatively inflexible. Moreover, a reliable cooling function can only be provided when the aircraft is flying at great heights where the aircraft surroundings are very cold. If the aircraft is on the ground after landing, the cooling functions can only be guaranteed by an additional cold storage unit, the cold capacity of which is limited.
In response to this, it is an object of this invention to provide a cooling system of the type described above, which avoids the disadvantages of the current state of the art technology described above, and which has a simple structure and offers a high level of flexibility with regard to the installation and good adaptability to the current cold requirement.